


In A Week

by RoseChintz



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adoribull - Freeform, Bad Ending, Character Death, Dragon Age Spoilers, Dragon Age: Trespasser - Freeform, Dragon Age: Trespasser Spoilers, Inspired by Music, M/M, Major Character Injury, Major character death - Freeform, Qun-Loyal Iron Bull, Tissue Warning, Trespasser DLC, Trespasser Spoilers, mostly canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 04:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5034697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseChintz/pseuds/RoseChintz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The blood poured from Dorian, some intestines following it, and he hated himself enough to wonder what had been going through his husband’s mind before he was betrayed.</p>
<p>(It was Dorian, all Dorian, always Dorian.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In A Week

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Hozier song In A Week, proofed by the impeccable Bwans, and helped along via the services of InfiniteLooper and my ability to listen to the same song for an hour and a half. 
> 
>  
> 
> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oho-q53uiv4 
> 
> Lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/hozier/inaweek.html

 

 

Dorian electrocuted his husband, and everything went weightless and fuzzy after that.

The Bull fell and Dorian went with him, stumbling, landing jarringly hard on his knees. Bull convulsed and Dorian, clutching the great bleeding _hole_ in his stomach, wished he could take it back. He laid his other palm on the Qunari’s chest and forced ice into it, slowing him, chilling him. Bull’s seizures stopped and his teeth chattered for one stuttering breath.

It wasn’t enough lightning to kill him. _Again._ The bastard had shoved a sword through Dorian’s stomach, and he still couldn’t bring himself to end him. Only lay his hand near Bull’s own dragon tooth necklace and hurt him very, very, badly. There were no potions here, though, no camp healer to return to. And Dorian’s frost-charged hand had a spell on Bull’s heart.

The lightning wouldn’t kill him, no, but the ice would soon enough.

The blood poured from Dorian, some intestines following it, and he hated himself enough to wonder what had been going through his husband’s mind before he was betrayed.

How easy it must have been, with Dorian’s fool heart so desperate for love.

 

 

\-----

 

 

An order is a beacon in the dark.

It is a path. A way. It is a piece of rock-solid truth, all-consuming. It is the essence of trust, of surrender, of all decisions absolved. You hear it, and you follow.

Amidst distress.

Amidst chaos.

It anchors you here, _now,_ gives you a sense of purpose with no strings attached. Your morality is not at stake; you are merely following orders.

It is out of your control. It is peace. If you follow the orders, you are doing the right thing.

You’re a good man.

The Iron Bull told himself this, and the comfort was small, but enough to release him. It let him think, _Hissrad. The Iron Bull is a title, and Hissrad is who I am_.

It let him call himself Hissrad, but when he held the ‘Vint to his chest, purposely throwing the mage’s mustache into disarray, it was sincere.

“ _Kadan,”_ he murmured, rumbled, _purred,_ and it was not a lie.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Hissrad waited for the order.

 

 

\-----

 

 

“You’ve started wearing it over your robes,” he observed. He sat in a chair in the room they had been given at the Winter Palace. Hissrad busied himself with tightening his brace while Dorian dressed, fussing over the multitude of buckles on his person.

“Hm? Oh, the dragon’s tooth?” He said it casually, as if it had no title. No meaning. As if it wasn’t a wedding ring.

“I figured I’ve a right to, having been present for the slaying of ten of them.”

“Eleven.”

“Wouldn’t put it past you to keep track, _amatus.”_ Dorian walked into Hissrad’s space, then, and the warrior – the _spy –_ murmured something that roughly translated to, ‘Always stealing the wind from my chest.’

Hissrad’s hands came down on Dorian’s hips. The spread of his hands alone nearly spanned the whole of the mage’s pelvis. Big, for a human, but still so small.

Dorian was not fragile, though. He had turned his back on everything he knew, everything he loved, and everything he was, to be whom he _is._ And then he had the nerve to _go back_ to set it right.

He was stronger by far than The Iron Bull ever was.

“What does that mean, Bull? ‘I cannot wait to defile your smallclothes?’”

Hissrad forced himself to look up, short as the distance was. The name didn’t feel like his anymore. He wanted it to. He looked up all the same, and Dorian’s smile was lopsided and genuine. He sounded on the verge of laughter. At what, Hissrad couldn’t guess. Elation, perhaps. Delighted to be reunited with his lover. His husband.

“Means I’m in over my head.” Another truth. One less lie from the liar.

He wanted to push Dorian away, scare him off, throw him out, just as much as he wanted to throw him over his shoulder and _run._ Send him and the Boss on a fool’s errand halfway across Thedas, where they might have time to go into hiding before the first waves hit.

But Dorian was here, he was in love, and Hissrad was ever the actor.

This would be easier, the spy thought, if he weren’t equally as smitten.

His own necklace felt cold and heavy on his chest.

 

 

\-----

 

Hissrad got the order.

 

He wasn’t as prepared as he thought he would be. He’d wanted to make it quick. Kill Dorian himself, so it was personal, yes, but so it was merciful. He would be gone before he knew what had happened.

But the words came, and his world closed in on them. The Inquisitor was half-turned in shock, Cole too slow, as The Bull grabbed Dorian by the shoulder.

_A beacon in the dark,_ he thought.  

“Nothing personal, _bas.”_ That was aimed at Adaar. She needed something to direct her anger at. Needed to be ready to fight. If she was ready, she and Cole could clear the room out, even without Hissrad’s help.

Without Dorian’s.

 

Hissrad drew his sword, and ran him through.

 

Adaar screamed something so colorful in common that he nearly missed it. It was justified, though. He had just taken a friend from her. Possibly her best friend. She was blocked out in the din of the charging war party.

The Inquisitor thusly occupied, Hissrad turned back to face his husband. Time to end this. He would make it quick. He did Love Dorian that much, at least. Even now Adaar pressed through the throng, hacking her way toward them as best she could.

 

He didn’t have long. Neither of them did.

 

Hissrad made a mistake, then, and in turning back to face him he met Dorian’s eyes. The mage was still standing, clutching his abdomen, and Hissrad had never seen a stare so equally full of water and fire. His throat squeezed shut, and he found he couldn’t move. Couldn’t pull his sword free. Couldn’t grab a dagger off his belt.

“ _Kadan,”_ Dorian spat. “You must have felt so _clever.”_

Strongest man Hissrad had ever met.

Dorian grasped the greatsword in both hands – the sword Hissrad had left there on purpose, anything to slow the bleeding – and shot lightning up it. They stumbled apart, and Hissrad grabbed Dorian’s collar even as Dorian lunged for him, staff clattering to the floor. A rushing Qunari collided with them and they fell, through the noise and the chaos and the _pain,_ through an open mirror.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Adaar wrenched her greataxe from the last Qunari’s skull, searching about the bodies frantically. “Dorian,” she yelled, trying and failing to wipe the blood from her eyes. “You had better be alive, you bastard! Cole, did they go through an _eluvian_? Did you see where they went?”

“He didn’t regret it,” Cole said, staring at the floor.

Adaar cursed and looked off to one side.

“He thought he was doing the right thing. That killing him was the only way to save him.”

The Inquisitor’s breath hitched on the word ‘killing.’ “Is he—can you feel him? Is Dorian…”

“He isn’t dead. Betrayed, bloodied, bereaved, but breathing. He isn’t dead yet.”

“Tell me where they went, Cole.”

“The Iron Bull thought he was saving him. ‘Strongest man I know, he’ll be poisoned with qamek.’ Collared, bound, and destroyed.”

“Cole!”

Her shout, desperate and afraid, exhausted and furious, echoed off the walls.

Cole pointed toward a mirror, his face not visible under the wide brim of his hat.

“That way,” he murmured. “But you won’t save him.”

Adaar pushed past him, pulling on her fury, hefting her greataxe over her shoulder, but was stopped by Cole’s gentle, freezing hand on her own.

“He will die,” Cole said, looking into the Inquisitor’s eyes. Searching. Pleading. “But if we go after them without help, just the two of us…”

Adaar cursed again, willing the sting from her eyes. She could not look at Cole. Only at the mirror, where the traitor who’d married her _best friend—_

“If you die, then everyone else will, too.”

His hand dropped, and she wished she could fight what she knew to be the truth.

 

 

\-----

 

 

It was like falling backwards into water, then through it again into yet more air. They were on a bridge, and then water, as the two toppled off the side.

The shock brought Hissrad—brought _The Iron Bull_ back, and he grabbed for Dorian, gasping, to drag him nearer to shore. It wasn’t far. The Qunari’s feet were already touching the muddy bottom.

He dragged Dorian onto the bank. He was bleeding freely, and blinking slowly. Bull hauled him up in a soldier’s carry, feeling sick as his hand wrapped around his husband to touch the great hole in his gut.

_He had put that there._

He heard a small, weak noise from Dorian – a laugh, Bull realized, mirthless and quiet – and that was all the warning he got before the mage’s hands were at his throat. Lightning leapt through his fingers. _Straight from my heart,_ amatus, Dorian thought harshly. It scattered across Bull’s wet skin and clothes and lanced its way inside of him.

Dorian poured his mana into the man who’d killed him.

 

 

\-----

 

 

The Bull stopped convulsing, and his heart began to slow in turn.

“I had hoped you’d take me down with you,” he grit out. Dorian hadn’t expected him to still be able to speak, and it startled him from his thoughts. Bull’s words had gone hard-edged and foreign around the common, his accent slipping.

Ice was a slow death. He wished he felt The Bull to be deserving of it. Dorian’s hand had not moved, and tears fell on it.

“Did you enjoy fooling me?”

Dorian noticed, belatedly, that the venom was missing from his words.

“I didn’t. I didn’t enjoy it and I didn’t fool you.” Bull rasped out a breath that didn’t seem to take. His system was going into shock. “I did love you. I do.”

_They’ll find us in a week,_ Dorian thought. _When the buzzards get loud._ The world began to lose color.

_After the insects have made their claim—_

 

“You’re too talented, _kadan._ We couldn’t hide, and they would find you, and catch you.” Dorian pressed more frost into him, willing his blood to freeze. He was out of mana. He was dying. But the intent was present.

“S…sew your mouth shut,” Bull gasped. “B-but you’re too. Too strong. To submit.”

The Bull—his husband—the _traitor_ reached for him then, and Dorian couldn’t flinch away, he was too dizzy, too stunned, too exhausted. The great hand missed his face and fell instead around Dorian’s dragon tooth necklace. He was reduced to whispering, now. Slowing down. Growing cold.

_After the foxes have known our taste—_

 

“They’d poison your mind. Break it. It had—it had to be. Had to be me. It was the only way. They can’t be stopped, _kadan.”_

He sounded close to crying, if he wasn’t already. But Dorian found that he couldn’t see much anymore.

_After the ravens have had their say—_

 

“I wouldn’t let them take you.”

_I’ll be home with you._

 

Dorian found The Bull’s chest rushing up to meet him as he collapsed across it. He could feel the cord of Bull’s necklace pressing into his cheek.

_I’ll be home with you._

He was going hazy, thoughts difficult to chase, but his last conscious contemplation was of forgiveness, of stubborn love, and of the world. How it held no happiness for the two of them. How it never would.

 

_I’ll be home with you._

 

Dorian didn’t know if The Bull’s heart had slowed to a stop or his own senses had ceased to function.

He breathed out, once, and slipped away.

 

_I’ll be home with you._

 

 


End file.
